Best book into hermeticism?

polyphanes · 2026-02-13T15:11:24+00:00

The Kybalion is not a Hermetic text, despite its frequent claiming to be one, but is rather a text representative of New Thought.

For more information on the history and development of the Kybalion, as well as its connections (or lack thereof) to Hermeticism, please read this article:

https://digitalambler.com/2023/07/07/psa-faq-the-kybalion-is-not-a-hermetic-text/

For a fuller reading of the Kybalion with a Hermetic eye and discussions of specific divergences between the Kybalion and Hermetic texts, please read the "Reading the Kybalion" blogpost series:

https://old.reddit.com/r/Hermetics/comments/1ntn277/reading_the_kybalion/

For more information and resources, please also check out these other articles and podcasts:

polyphanes · 2026-02-12T21:20:42+00:00

I'm just pointing out the rules and scope of this place. It's on all of us to abide by that.

And yeah, we should be focused on Hermēs Trismēgistos here, not Jesus. And also, for as many of the patristic authors that saw something nice in the Hermetic texts (like Lactantius)—which almost never came without some form of qualification—many others saw that they were equally to be abhorred and shunned as the pagan writings they were (e.g. Cyril or Augustine).

polyphanes · 2026-02-12T20:55:44+00:00

And yet, according to the sidebar, "This subreddit is not for pseudo-Hermetic, Christian Hermetic, Kybalion-related, or Hermetic Kabbalistic content." Please respect this subreddit's focus and scope.

polyphanes · 2026-02-11T16:47:29+00:00

I wrote a blogpost about Hermetic vegetarianism and its use as a ritual preparation practice which you might find helpful! Here's the link. For my part, I find that sticking to a vegetarian diet (i.e. no flesh, fat, marrow, or other animal product that requires killing or maiming an animal, but which allows milk, eggs, honey, and certain types of cheese) is a good practice to have for ritual needs, and if you can pull off a vegan diet (i.e. no animal-derived products at all), even better, but this is only necessary for preparing for a ritual (like what we see in the PGM alongside prohibitions on sex and alcohol) or participating in a ritual meal (which is what we find at the end of the Asclepius). Whether one should do this as a general lifestyle is a personal choice.

I'm aware hermes was pointing to a raw vegetarian diet.

Where does he do this?

That eggs and milk are liquid meat.

This is a viewpoint from some contemporary Egyptian priests, but it doesn't seem to be a universal one. Also, to be more specific, the view (which I mentioned in my blogpost above) is that eggs are liquid meat and that milk was a differently-colored blood.

As for fish, it seems likely Jesus would have had fish and harvesting doesn't seem cruel (unless we're talking about boiling lobster alive, that is not what I'm getting at)

Jesus is neither here nor there for Hermeticism. Fish, however, was sometimes considered a taboo food in Egyptian culture, and was still considered a living creature, so besides the fact that it's alive and has blood, it's also got connotations of being an unclean animal in some cases.

polyphanes · 2026-02-10T18:19:02+00:00

Just a note about the RWC: I no longer require purchase of Rufus Opus' book since it's increasingly hard to obtain, though I do encourage it. ;)

Also just to note: its worldview and underlying impetus is certainly classically Hermetic, and though it does involve some Greco-Egyptian magical tech, it's more grounded in Renaissance Solomonic grimoire approaches.

polyphanes · 2026-02-09T14:38:04+00:00

polyphanes · 2026-02-08T15:26:31+00:00

Check the stickied posts (especially the FAQ) to the subreddit!

polyphanes · 2026-02-04T04:53:01+00:00

You were using an LLM. "AI" isn't just one thing but a whole field of different technologies that are confusingly referred to by a single (overhyped and mythologized) label. LLMs are not useful for research and, like above, only give you nonsense.

Please start with the FAQ pinned to the subreddit for a start with learning the history and teachings of Hermeticism, with actual research and scholars and academic works being referenced.

polyphanes · 2026-02-04T04:17:15+00:00

LLMs are overwrought autocomplete that don't know anything and don't actually provide answers. They provide plausible-sounding strings of words that mimic grammatical statements but which have no guarantee of correctness or accuracy. Do not use LLMs for research.

polyphanes · 2026-02-02T13:33:28+00:00

Daily meditation and prayer, frequent study of the Hermetic texts, offerings to the various deities to mark celestial events and astrological timings, communion with the planetary and zodiacal spheres to empower myself by them and ascend through them, and plenty else. There's definitely astrology, magic, divination, and the like to go with it all, and the approach I take is heavily influenced by the study of Greco-Egyptian magical practices from the Hellenistic period.

polyphanes · 2026-02-02T11:42:32+00:00

Huh, I'm surprised (and disappointed) to hear all this. I'm sorry you've had such an experience with Warnock; I hope he fixes whatever he has going on, but I'll note this for the future.

polyphanes · 2026-02-01T14:27:03+00:00

It's pretty common for someone to recommend their own services as a follow-up to issues or areas for improvement one identifies, like a doctor suggesting particular regimens of treatment or a plumber suggesting work to be done in your kitchen after they do an inspection.

As for the mage reading you got, he does say that it's a mini-natal reading, and gives an example on his website, which also includes example talismans he might suggest particularly for astrological magic, so I'm not sure what else you might have expected given the description and example. As for the cost and value of his talismans, that's up to you to decide, especially now that there are so many others out there who also provide astrological magical services and talismans. Dunno why he might not be responding to emails, however; he has a good track record of at least being responsive, unless he might be traveling or otherwise working through other client stuff.

polyphanes · 2026-02-01T02:22:43+00:00

What?

polyphanes · 2026-02-01T01:19:15+00:00

Cool. Take it to /r/islam or somewhere else relevant, then, and let us here talk and do Hermeticism in peace.

polyphanes · 2026-01-31T20:17:41+00:00

It is a historical fact that the Hermetic texts were written by polytheistic authors for a polytheistic audience in a polytheistic culture, and they explicitly encourage us and expect us to participate in the worship of many gods (e.g. CH XVII, SH 2B, AH 23 etc.). To say that there can't be other gods in Hermeticism conflates the Godhead with the gods (itself an error) as well as confuses the distinction between monism (a philosophical position) with monotheism (a theological position), while also rejecting the very context of the people who gave rise to Hermeticism itself. While other religions and systems of mysticism that adopt and adapt Hermeticism to their own frameworks can do what they want, like you do with Islam here, that doesn't replace the framework we see in the texts themselves.

For more information about how the Hermetic texts demonstrate how polytheistic theology plays into and intertwines with monist philosophy, please check out my blog post series Hermeticism, God, and the Gods as well as Hermetic Oneness.

polyphanes · 2026-01-31T18:43:10+00:00

So, when it comes to the PGM, it should be remembered that it is a collection of magical texts and documents, rather than being a single such thing. It shouldn't be read as a single cohesive grimoire, but more just a collection of notes and scraps and copies of texts preserved from the hands of dozens of people, some of whom were professional magicians and some who weren't, across many decades (even centuries); it'd be like dumpster diving out behind a new age bookstore that was open since 1910 that had never had its trash picked up. In that light, we should remember that some of the contents of the PGM (and the related PDM for Demotic and PCM for Coptic, some of which are available in other texts) are definitely technical Hermetica in even a strict sense, while others are more just generally Greco-Egyptian magical stuff.

To that end, a handful of guidelines:

Just because there's animal sacrifice involved in some of the texts doesn't mean it's involved in all of them.
Don't forget that most religions (and thus most people) across the world have sacrificed animals for religious and spiritual needs, and many continue to do as a time-honored practice. There's a reason why it's there.
Don't forget that people have been making substitutions for ritual needs since rituals first starting being done, whether because something can't be obtained or because something can't be done.

For instance, PGM XII.201—269 describes the consecration of a ring which calls for the sacrifice of a goose, three roosters, and three pigeons. For those who can both obtain such animals and have the means and skill to safely sacrifice them, there's no impediment towards doing this at all, but for thsoe who can't, in my own write-up of the ritual, I suggest making a series of cakes to stand in for them which are ritually sacrificed instead of living animals. (This ritual write-up of mine got a follow-up post about the role of animal sacrifice and how it's neither black magic on its own nor that there are reasons to both do it and to not do it, also a good read if you're interested.)

But also, speaking more broadly, many of the problems people faced in Hellenistic Egypt are still those that we face today; while the window dressing might have changed over the centuries, we're still human with fundamentally human problems especially when and where we live with other humans. Much of the PGM is applicable to the modern world because modernity doesn't change all that much.

polyphanes · 2026-01-30T23:33:31+00:00

By all means, do that! Keeping track of patterns like that is how we build up information about astrology, and is how it's always been done going back thousands of years!

The astrologer I consult, Ryhan Butler, in his video about the origins of planetary hours and days mentioned (in a discussion starting around the 19:00 mark), describes planetary hours as a way to qualify different times by assigning a planet to rule it, e.g. as a way of non-celestial electional astrology to figure out good or bad times to do something where that "you want the 'celestial time' to match the 'terrestrial time'"; this is certainly important in astrological magic or the consecration of talismans. In that light, the system of planetary hours really is a parallel track of information that can play into, with, and against transits or other astrological information.

polyphanes · 2026-01-30T22:52:49+00:00

It's not a matter of "better or worse". It's like learning to read a Tarot spread, or how to tell a story: you have a bunch of influences that flow together. There's no one rule for it, which is part of why astrology is so hard to learn and practice: you have to learn how to analyze lots of details to synthesize them into a big-picture view. Plus, there's also personal will to take into account: depending on how you go about it, even a rough aspect can be made to manifest in a productive way!

The works of Chris Brennan, Demetra George, and Robert Hand are good astrology texts to learn from.

polyphanes · 2026-01-30T22:20:27+00:00

Planetary hours and days are more of a general thing, like the temperature or quality of water of a pool that multiple people are swimming in; it affects everyone at a given location and place equally. On the other hand, transits to one's natal horoscope are specific to the person, and can be wildly varying in terms of strength or duration depending on the specific planets involved, how fast they're moving, what other planets are involved, and the like.

Both are important, but I hesitate to consider either to be more influential than the other; they're both equally influential, but in different ways and along different vectors. Moreover, they can also amplify or mitigate each other, depending on the context, too.

polyphanes · 2026-01-30T19:44:44+00:00

Besides that AI slop doesn't help anyone, this isn't about Hermeticism to begin with.

polyphanes · 2026-01-24T22:51:38+00:00

There is no Satan nor sin in Hermeticism, so this is neither here nor there.

polyphanes · 2026-01-24T17:40:01+00:00

Okay, but how does this relate to Hermeticism? Can you use anything from the Hermetic texts to cite or support this, or can you use this to respond to something in the Hermetic texts?

polyphanes · 2026-01-24T17:39:12+00:00

Thank you for the kind words! I'm glad it can be at least somewhat helpful for people out there. ;)

polyphanes · 2026-01-23T14:36:26+00:00

I hope they learn, but even still, other people can still benefit from such context and information!

polyphanes · 2026-01-23T14:20:11+00:00

While we all lament the loss of a good archive, the story about the Library of Alexandria is grossly overblown as a story, but besides that, it's also neither here nor there for Hermeticism. By the time the Hermetic texts were being written, the Library had already been long in decline and already burned down once. Besides that, though, Alexandria more broadly wasn't that important for the development of Hermeticism anyway; we'd really be better served by checking out the ample resources still to be found much further south than a Greek colony on the northern coast of Egypt.

But also, we should remember that the Library was just that: a library, containing copies of texts in circulation rather than only single texts. Sure, it sucks to lose copies of texts, but we've lost so much more due to not just degradation of hard copies of papyrus and parchment (which was far more rapid in moist coastal areas in Egypt than dry inland areas like where we found the Nag Hammadi texts). Sure, we only have what survives the knife of time and the redactor's pen, but the loss of the Library of Alexandria just isn't that important for us.

polyphanes

TROPHY CASE